Remember something about your mom that makes/made her great.
It’s all about Mom this time.
UPDATE: Here’s a real mother for you.
I don’t know this television program, but dig the high hat.
UPDATE: I’d like to thank Mom for birthing me a time that would ensure that I was a teenager at a privileged moment in our cultural history.
Mom and Dad are out at dinner, catching up with a long-ago colleague and his wife. They’re swapping stories of their lives for the past 20 years. A tragedy has befallen the ex-colleague’s family.
Former colleague: “My daughter . . . my beautiful daughter. Do you know what she’s become?”
Dramatic pause.
Mom: “Not . . . not . . . a social worker?!”
Fortunately, it turned out she was only a Moonie.
The greatest thing about my mom, at least from my perspective, is that she didn’t smother me with a pillow as I slept when I was a child. Other people tend to wish she had a bit more intestinal fortitude to “do what should have been done so many years ago.”
Love ya, mom.
Other than having me?
She let us take risks.
Mom is a skeptic and she passed that along. Oh, and she didn’t lop my cock off!
Thanks, Mom!
Someone won’t be getting a Mother’s Day card.
Pablo, that story, combined with the story I just read about a mom who coached her son and daughter to pretend to be retarded to claim benefits, makes me quite content to have the messed up familial relationships I do. Thanks, sort of.
Something that makes me wonder about the fake retard story is: why did it take a normal-acting appearance in traffic court to determine that the guy wasn’t actually retarded? Isn’t the mere fact that the guy has a driver’s license enough? Or does the State of Washington allow the retarded to drive? Driving is frightening enough without wondering whether the swerving, speeding, tailgating guy on the cell phone is retarded, too.
I’m not really sure you guys are into the spirit of the thing.
Carry on.
Thanks to my parents (who recently celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary) and to God for my luck in being born into a family in that window of time where children could actually be children. Yes, my mom was a SAHM like the majority of other moms, but she was never Patriarchy’s Slave.
And thanks to my mom for not saying “I told you so” much as I was raising my own daughters.
The one thing I’ve learned as a mom myself…you never stop being a mom.
This is Protein Wisdom last I checked. The spirit of this thing is an angry one that feeds on snark and references to genitals. PORN COCKS OF FREEDOM have moms too, ya know.
Spirit of the thing?
The first line was a lame joke, aimed at me.
The second line was real.
How about defining risks? Such as letting some boys build a tree fort on the wooded lot, with dad only reminding us not to leave his tools out there? Or letting eleven and eight year old boys take out a Sailfish and sail it on the lake alone? Or letting us canoe down the Cut River, across Marl Lake (with its quicksand – no lie) and further down the river to the first pullout?
Sometimes I look around at the USA and wonder how the heck we all survived without the tugging apronstrings and all the self-esteem building exercises that build nothing.
She – they – let us take risks.
water22 is very dangerous.
I had a run in with the cops when I was 17. I was picking my sister up from the grocery store she worked at around 11pm. I was with a couple of friends and in my juvenile mischievousness I had a squirt gun and was planning on squirting my sister unexpectedly. A good samaritan witnessed my entrance into the grocery store and called the cops, claiming a store was being robbed.
I remember, as we were handcuffed and forced to sit on the pavement for over an hour, staring at a vase of flowers and a teddy bear that was resting one the ground next to my sister. It was quickly becoming Mother’s Day and my sister had purchased the items and was going to put them in the kitchen for our mom to awaken to.
Unfortunately she was awakened roughly 6 hours too soon by the police who thought it best that they drive us home and explain to our mom the neglegent behaviour of her children. But there was a sort of humor in the whole thing when my mom opened the front door to find me and my sister behind two police officers, holding flowers and a teddy bear and greeting her with “Happy Mother’s Day”.
She found humor in it too. She had faith in us and our ability to be good responsible people, even when we seemed to want to prove otherwise. My mom’s the greatest!
My friends all liked my mother better than they liked me. And they were right.
Why? She was very smart, very reserved, had no pretenses, dealt with each person or kid individually as valuable, and loved Rock and Roll. + She was a dedicated SAHM, and I once heard through the sib grapevine that she didn’t like Feminists at all. But, otherwise, I never heard her say a bad word about anyone.
My mom always said her claim to fame was that she raised 8 children and not one of them ever spent a night in jail. 3 1/2 years after her death, with the oldest at 62 and the youngest 41, that’s still a true statement.
And she has cursed her descendants for untold generations with the things HER momma used to say, like the ever-annoying
“Little birds in their nest agree,
And ‘tis a sorry sight
When children in the same family
Fall out, and fuss, and fight!”
TW: Yes, I remember26 her fondly.
Fuss and fall out? My brothers and I did that every day – verbally and also physically.
“What will the neighbors think?”
Since we are all productive citizens and best friends – good work, mom.
She’s the only one that will tell me how the movie/show/book ends without giving me a hard time about spoiling it.
Thanks Mom.
I just want to express my loyal support for all the pro-life Moms across America this Mother’s Day 2007.
Thank you for your vote!
– Jude
My mom always hated for school to start again because she loved having us home in the summer. Some of the other moms said she was crazy for saying that, but I adored her for it because it always made me feel so special and loved. She never fussed about a clean house if there were stories to be told or card table forts to be built. Her priorities were that her children and her husband came first – the house would always be there later.
When we became adults, my sister and brother and I all confided in each other that we always thought we were our mom’s favorite child. Alzheimer’s robbed us of much precious time with her, but the memories are so sweet.
Now that my children are grown (24 and 20), I hope they have memories of me that are as precious to them. I had a good role model and tried my best. It’s all any mom can do.
How Alexandra Learned To Use A Sponge
… A Daughter’s Remembrance
On a personal level, there’s something about Pelosi’s scrubbed and polished personality that undercuts her association with Haight-Ashbury and the Castro. She is a graduate of Trinity College, a women’s Catholic school in Washington; she married young and stayed married, had five children in six years and made a sacrament out of ironing.
The third of her children, Jacqueline Kenneally, recalls seeing her mother at a town meeting in San Francisco surrounded by her “shocking” and “wild” constituency – the transgendered group in one corner, the homeless activists in another – and thinking “Oh my god, what’s my mom doing here?”
“If they think she’s some ‘60s hippie, liberal type, they definitely have the wrong person,” Kenneally said.
Daughter Alexandra Pelosi, a filmmaker, holds an indelible picture in her mind: mother with a phone in one hand and the iron in the other, somehow managing to keep family and party in good order. On weekends, she made a family project out of stuffing envelopes for Democratic candidates – one folding, one addressing and Alexandra, as the youngest, licking until her tongue was parched. One day, her mother pointed out she should use a sponge.
The daughters fought over who got to serve bagels to Linda Ronstadt at fundraisers for California’s then-Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown.
Well, mom kicked over the bucket before the obstetrician could drown me; I’ve always appreciated that…
I’m sorry your mom kicked the bucket, GMG.
I sense a soon-to-be-guest-blogger at Pandagon and/or Feministing. Talk about yer direct action against the Ofay Patriarchy…
My mom, God rest her soul, never let me quit.
My mother beat me for as long as she could and by then she didn’t have to anymore.
If I am ever in another band, I am totally naming it “Porn Cocks Of Freedom”.
I may go have to make a shirt with that on it anyway. That is too good to keep to myself.
My mom beat me sometimes too, but it was always fair and square.
She was a cutthroat at Monopoly.
You can all be thankful that Mom didn’t cast you aside like so much garbage.
Thanks Mom for caring about me and never giving up on my worthless carcass. You are gone and I have to face the world on my own. You gave me the tools I needed and I am grateful. I love you and I miss you.